Here at Surevine I’m lucky enough to work alongside a bunch of really smart, tech-minded people. From time to time my colleagues come up with ideas for projects (mobile apps, websites, etc), some of which are great! As a company I don’t think we are special in this regard. It seems to be a common situation in our industry, and is perhaps inevitable, that smart people come up with good ideas. Unfortunately, it also seems to be commonplace for employees to be prevented from working on projects in their own time, forcing them to either abandon the idea, or leave their job – not a good situation for either party.

Unlike many companies however, Surevine has decided that instead of stifling this innovative culture, it would be better for everyone to embrace it. In the interests of being open, I thought it would be good to share a little bit of information on what what we have put in place to support this culture: Surevine labs.

Our company has some history in this space. Surevine itself was born out of an opportunity to work on a side project, and so from day one the value of supporting innovation has been well known to us.

Surevine labs has actually been around for some time in one format or another. It was first created a couple of years ago by a then Surevine employee who had spotted a gap in the market for a potential business and wanted to pursue it further. Labs was established, and this allowed him to explore his idea further. This eventually resulted in him leaving Surevine to work on the project(s) full time.

Following this great example, Surevine were keen to retain labs, and it has recently been reinvigorated and promoted within the company. Labs is a framework to allow Surevine employees to work on side projects and ‘scratch the itch’ of an idea that they may have had. What this means in practice:

• Employees can receive permission to work on side projects
• Employees can reclaim the intellectual property rights for any approved project
• There’s an opportunity to collaborate with Surevine (on a per project basis)

This is early days for the revamped labs, and I think its fair to say that none of us are sure what will come of it. So far it has been met by praise from our team, and uptake / interest has been good. We’ve had some existing projects getting formally ‘waived’, as well as some new ideas submitted and approved (where possible).

From my own point of view (as someone who has had some ideas for side projects), I’m glad this has been put in place, and I’m very excited to see what this brings in the future.

There are plans in the pipeline to publicise a list of our labs projects (probably on the website in some form), so watch this space!